This is what it looks like when you defrost an entire building

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Have you ever wondered what happened when a company abandons a warehouse that used to house ten stories of cold storage? Okay, you probably haven’t, but since you’re thinking about it now, check out these awesome pictures of the erstwhile Fulton Market Cold Storage Company building in Chicago. Prepare to be dazzled.

In a display that most Hollywood set designers probably couldn’t even fathom, the abandoned building has become something of an indoor winter wonderland. Fortunately, the architects that were tasked with turning the building back into usable office space, Perkins+Will, had the state of mind to think, “We should videotape the transformation of this craziness.”

The thawing out process itself wasn’t anything too exceptional, although when you watch it in action in time-lapse form (see the video below), it’s pretty cool. It would have been neater if they tried to melt the place with a truckfull of lava, but then again that’s already been done.

Yes, it’s true — for being nothing more than a bunch of hydrogen and oxygen atoms, ice can be a pretty cool thing, even in the world of technology. The new tenant of the building, by the way, is a bicycle parts company called SRAM. Its employees are among the few who will be able to say, “I work in an office that used to be a giant freezer.”